Monday, January 24, 2011

Healing in Cataclysm

Healers, I feel your pain.

I decided to give Cataclysm healing a shot for the first time on my Druid, who is level 83. I have been leveling as a bear for the most part, but the reason I made my Druid in the first place was for the unique healing methods.

The random I got into was Stonecore. Probably not the best instance to start with. Well, the first pull was a wipe. Nobody bothered to either CC the mob that turns into an elemental and AOEs everything. I couldnt keep everyone up and keep the tank from dying.

The Rogue in the group asks. "Have you ever healed before?"

"I reply, have you ever done an instance before?"

Rogue: "Lol yeah"

Me: "Then fucking CC or interrupt the guy that AOEd everything to death."

So, we take down that pull and move on to the next. I am marking since the Tank is apparently a can't do it.

I ask for the rogue to sap the star. He walks up to sap the star. ONLY HE IS NOT FUCKING STEALTHED!!!!! Needless to say, he gets his ass handed to him, and I wasn't prepared to start healing. Before we could wipe, I just left group.

If people can't listen and do their roles, then I just do not want to be in the group.

I feel for the healer. It feels nearly impossible to keep the tank up while healing DPS at the same time.

On another note, I finished a couple of other Heroic instances over the weekend. I finished Lost City of Tolvir and Heroic Deadmines. I actually rather enjoy heroic deadmines.

We got in and one shotted the first three bosses without much trouble. Then we got to Ripsnarl. I don't really care for that fight at all. We took it down on the second or third try with one DPS still alive and everyone else dead.

Then we got cookie, which was another interesting fight. My tanking mostly considered eating all of the rotten food. It took us a couple of trys, but we got Cookie on the third try.

Then we one shotted Vanessa Van Cleef. I must say that I very much enjoyed that fight. Doing the different nightmares then doing like the Goonies and swinging off the boat on a rope was epic fun.

I wish more of the instances could be that enjoyable.

(I got to 85 and Heroic Ready after I wrote this. I will update tommorow)

6 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Honestly, with the way the dungeons are designed...at least on the regular modes (not sure about heroics), it is often easier to let the idiot stand-in-the-fire dps die and just focus on the tank. I find that if I try to heal dps through their mistakes, we wipe just like you said. Better to just keep yourself and tank alive. This of course means that the tank needs to be holding aggro at least somewhat well, but usually you can go through a pack of mobs with even 2 of the dps dead. The best part it is that it costs THEM money when they die, so they'll either stop being idiots, or they'll just drop group and VIOLA! you can continue on. So, to sum it up, let them die if they're being stupid.

I've had my druid out healing Lich King instances as I catch him up to Cata, and it has been a trial.

The changes to mana consumption mean that there is no longer a huge buffer to take care of DPS in trouble.

I suppose this is actually a good thing, because pre-Cata I was throwing around heals like a sailor on shore leave... if that makes any sense... and rarely gave a thought to my mana pool. Now I have to plan and can't just make up for the mistakes of others.

Though, when we wipe, it still seems to be the healer's fault no matter what really happened.

Completely agree with anonymous, let the stupid die to standing in the stupid. It will be even worse in heroics before you have enough gear to support the mana regen and the damage comes faster than you have GCDs to even try to stop it.

I been struggling with keeping up on heals with my druidalt as well but Anonposter has really opened my eyes. The kind of players who can't be arsed stepping out of the red/purple/green icky on the ground to keep himself alive probably won't tell the difference I'm im trying my best to spamheal his butt off the ground or not anyway. If I succeed he merrily does it again next pull, if I fail despite trying I get blamed for it. No, I'm going to let them burn to crisp instead from now on methinks. :]

What is this CC you speak of? Despite the need for CC in instances, the classes who have this ability refuse to. I am actually scared to death. When I get to 85 with Vordan I might be an epic fail healer, not by real standards but by dps standards of "omg heal me through standing in the bad." I am dreading it.